


White Elephant

by Kairos27



Series: White Lightning [3]
Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:53:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29466813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kairos27/pseuds/Kairos27
Summary: Mina and Sana, together.Or: a few scenes from White Gold and its unfinished sequel.
Relationships: Minatozaki Sana/Myoui Mina
Series: White Lightning [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/803499
Comments: 4
Kudos: 62





	White Elephant

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this work is tongue-in-cheek, as it fits the titling scheme of the series, but, as Google says, its "cost is out of proportion to its maintenance." I began writing a sequel directly after publishing White Gold (back in 2017), but the result was extremely unsatisfying and thus I have never been able to finish it. Since then, after noticing that readers here have continuously been giving love to White Gold, I decided to publish a few J-Line selections in my drafts, as a gift to you all who have read and enjoyed White Gold.

Mina has been taking Korean lessons from Sana for several months when she realizes that Sana's nickname for Momo, Moguri, is a wordplay on the Korean word for raccoon, _neoguri_. The look on Mina's face when she ﬁgures it out is wide eyed and adorable. “I thought that it was gibberish,” she says, and shakes her head. “I'm an idiot. Of course you'd have thought of something like this.”

Sana pats Mina’s cheeks. “You're cute. However! Who's the one who just graduated from university, and with honors too? Not me.”

“The way you say that sounds less like a compliment and more like an indictment of the educational system.” Mina turns her attention back to her notebook. “But thank you.”

Mina's become more serious about learning Korean ever since their business deal with the Jung sisters of San Francisco, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and God Knows Where Else. So far, the alliance has been beneﬁcial for both sides, but it also puts Mina on edge even though she'd been the one to initiate it. It isn't just because Krystal Jung becomes a bitchy sourpuss whenever her sister looks at other people (honestly it's only natural that Jessica Jung should warm up to someone as composed and talented and beautiful as Myoui Mina); it's because the Jungs’ organization, whatever the hell it’s called, could crush everything Mina's worked so hard to build, could grind Mina to dust--if Krystal Jung’s hilariously petty ass wanted to do it.

The hell she will. Not on Sana's watch. (Which is vintage Audemars Piguet, by the way.)

Sana has been at least conversational in Korean since she was in diapers; she had learned to speak the language from her babysitter, the mother of a ranking Zainichi Korean in the Osaka faction. Yakuza groups have always had a reputation for taking in outsiders and the marginalized in Japanese society, which more or less includes the ethnic Koreans living in Japan. The babysitter had been dismissed when Sana was still in primary school, but young Sana retained her Korean abilities throughout her adolescence by watching dramas and frequenting the Korean shops and restaurants in Osaka’s Ikuno ward. She'd scored free food many times like this, schmoozing with the older proprietors in their native language. From Sana's observations, Mina is picking up the language very quickly; it's both impressive and frightening. “I've got a few things to say about higher education but there's one thing that I know for sure. You are the farthest thing from an idiot. I'd appreciate it if you never called yourself that ever again,” Sana says, leaning in to meet Mina's lips in a brief, chaste kiss. Mina sucks gently at Sana's bottom lip before pulling away; a technique that she'd learned from Sana herself. Sana leans back and notices a shy but playful spark in Mina's eyes. “What?”

Mina blushes, leans in and murmurs something in her ear. A pleasant buzzy lightheadedness, not unlike the feeling of having had too much caﬀeine (but a hundred times better), settles in Sana's brain at the whispered words. It's so completely, utterly Mina--polite but wonderful and sweet and suddenly sexy, the way her lips paint _yeoja chingu ga isseoyeo_? on Sana’s skin. Suddenly it's as if the blood vessels underneath her skin ﬁll with lava wherever Mina touches and damn it, this woman tunes Sana like a cello string, high and sharp.

Sana reaches out and closes Mina's notebook with a quiet slap. “Yeah, I do have a girlfriend,” she breathes, as she wraps an arm around Mina's waist and tugs her onto her lap. The shyness that Mina has always had glimmers one more time behind her beautiful irises before it vanishes, swallowed by a conﬁdent smirk and a naughty tongue as she dives in for a longer, thoroughly oxygen deprived kiss, hands sliding from Sana's cheeks down her neck, across her ribs and into the waistband of her sweatpants. Sana gasps, and then giggles.

* * *

Since Mina got involved in Kanahara Ltd., the company has moved its Tokyo headquarters from Roppongi’s Izumi Garden Tower to Toranomon Hills (oﬃce rents in Tokyo are high enough to make even Sana's eyes water, but then again that drug money brought in by the Jung partnership has got to be laundered somewhere).

As expected, some of the board of executives at the ﬁrm already have connections to the yakuza, speciﬁcally to the largest and most powerful of the Tokyo-based groups, which has remained neutral towards the Kobe syndicate. Despite their oﬃcial neutrality, some of their leaders have “expressed dissatisfaction at the regime change in Kansai,” as some of Mina's advisors have diplomatically put it. Nobody has done anything stupid yet; Myoui Mina's current reputation as a cunning strategist who schemed her way into controlling the Kobe-Osaka-Kyoto triangle precedes her, as well as the rumors about the shinobi who trails her every step from the shadows (Sana is always amused at how the boys’ gossip about Momo gets more and more fanciful and ridiculous as time goes by).

Sana is huﬃng and puﬃng by the time she makes it to Toranomon Hills, earning several curious stares from almost everyone she passes. She's not one for running in general (she does her best to stay trim, because she's pretty vain, but she also does not want to overdo it because Mina is obsessed with the curve of Sana's ass even if she'll never admit it out loud).

Once the Shinkansen had dropped her oﬀ at Tokyo Station, she'd run to catch the subway and then ran from the Kokkai-gijidomae station to Toranomon. Her lungs are burning when she skids to a stop in front of the doors with the ‘Kanahara Ltd.’ plaque next to them. She opens the door, bowing distractedly to the surprised receptionist, and turns down the hallway leading to Mina's oﬃce. Mina's oﬃce door is open and she deﬁnitely heard Sana's winded panting, because there's only a split second between Sana reaching Mina's oﬃce door and Sana being tackled oﬀ her feet with an armful of rich girlfriend.

Between being out of breath and then being knocked down, Sana can only manage an “Ow,” as a greeting. She turns her head to see Tzuyu's Stuart Weitzman heels click past, and then glances up to see Tzuyu herself, looking very unimpressed and carrying bulging plastic bags branded with the 7-Eleven logo. She must have been in a diﬀerent elevator, because it seems that she had arrived right after Sana.

“Oh, sorry! Are you all right?” Mina's expression shifts from happy surprise to worry in an instant. Sana nods reassuringly and wraps a free arm around Mina, so that Mina can feel and hear her racing heartbeat. She looks up again and Tzuyu’s judgmental frown has been joined by Momo’s vacant raccoon stare.

“I don't think anything is broken, so yes. Don't worry.” She'll have a couple bruises, though. “Miss me?”

Mina cups her face apologetically and kisses her forehead before helping Sana to her feet, whereupon Sana, once regaining her breath, sweeps Mina back in and gives her a proper kiss, that is to say a full on lip lock--for Tzuyu’s ediﬁcation, of course. Mina is blushing when they peel apart, but her smile is dazzling. “I was missing you before but not now.”

Before Sana can prepare a witty reply, Mina turns to Tzuyu. “Did you get something for Koizumi-san?” Mina asks, referring to the receptionist, who still can't quite believe that her boss is almost the same age as her, not to mention a female. As a result she seems to be constantly starstruck by Mina, who she thinks is some sort of prodigy.

“Yes, she wanted some onigiri, a bottled green tea and a box of Pocky. I gave them to her on the way in.” Tzuyu goes into the adjacent conference room, ﬂicks on the lights, and then dumps the contents of the bags onto the conference table.

Sana looks at the clock. “Did everyone else go home?”

Tzuyu sniﬀs. “Mina-san wouldn't have tackled you to the ﬂoor if the other employees were still here. Especially the other executives and managing directors; it's highly unprofessional and no doubt they would criticize her for it,” she says, as she paws through the items scattered across the table and frees a package of Oreos and a package of Kit-Kat (cookies and cream ﬂavor) from the pile.

While Momo and Tzuyu continue digging through the snacks, canned and bottled drinks, Sana slides over to Mina, leaning over and nuzzling into Mina's cheek. Mina giggles, even as she is eagerly opening the omurice bento Momo hands over to her--also known as the ketchup bomb to end all ketchup bombs. A surge of aﬀection bubbles up within her. “Did I surprise you?”

Mina kisses Sana's nose. “I was surprised when Momo told me that she heard your footsteps through the wall when you came out of the elevator. I _am_ glad you're here, even though we're supposed to be going home tomorrow. What was that about the supplier in Suita, though?”

“Already done.” Sana grins. “I decided on a whim that I didn't want to wait.”

* * *

Toranomon Hills’ main tower is a mixed use building; in addition to retail and oﬃces, it houses the upscale Andaz hotel in the topmost ﬂoors, with the ten ﬂoors below it used as private residences. One of these residential units belongs to Momo; that is to say, the unit is owned by a shell company that also owns Momo's house in Arashiyama, as well as other properties in across Japan, and in turn the shell company is held by a trust that has Momo named as the beneﬁciary. Momo had told them about the trust after seeing how surprised they were that she owned property in Tokyo, a city she'd never been to until very recently, when Mina started going there more often for work. She still refuses to talk about how she ended up with that trust.

Either way, Momo doesn't seem at all attached to the Toranomon Hills high rise like she is to the Arashiyama house, probably because she's never lived there and also because it's really high up and heights are not Momo's favorite thing. Mina stays in the apartment whenever she's in Tokyo, and at the beginning it had been obvious that Momo's never used it because it's devoid of practically everything except a chabudai in the living room, a few futons stored in the closet, and a carafe to boil water. That's something of a waste considering that it is already a spacious apartment for Tokyo, priced at over four hundred million yen.

“Momo isn't familiar with buying real estate. She said herself that she didn't bother too much with her ﬁnances at all, outside of daily expenses, until after she decided to strike out on her own, and even then Seulgi had to help her ﬁnd where the money was deposited or invested. It was Seulgi who helped her set up that trust for the clinic in Kyoto. But this particular trust...I speculated that it was set up by the clan to launder money, since she's had the house in Arashiyama for a while,” Mina says, as Sana cuddles up to her on one of the futons later that night--more accurately, in the wee hours of the morning. Momo is absent, choosing instead to spend the night scouting around Shinjuku.

Sana toys with Mina's ﬁngers, stroking each digit gently and caressing her knuckles. “All she'd say before is that the house was a gift. That means she was given the trust because the house is part of that?”

“I'm guessing that this apartment was purchased by the shell corporation before the building was completed, unless a trustee initiated the purchase after Momo received the trust. Given the relationship between Momo and the clan, though, it seems unlikely that her teachers, or the trustees if there were any, would allow her to beneﬁt from a trust that they set up for their own use. The money she made when she was being hired out for assignments went to overseas accounts. If the trust was set up by the clan for their own purposes, obviously they'd be separate from Momo's ﬁnances.” Mina's curiosity is like caﬀeine; she won't sleep until it is ﬂushed out of her system. Good thing that caﬀeine is Sana's drug of choice.

Sana kisses Mina's shoulder. “I just think she has a sugar daddy that she doesn't want to talk about.”

“A sugar daddy.” Mina turns to face Sana more fully. “Really?”

“Well. Sugar mommy, maybe.” Sana bumps her nose against Mina's. “Moguri wouldn't outright tell you anything about her past, unless she thinks that you'll completely understand its signiﬁcance. Even I don't know any details, except for what you've told me.”

Even in the dark, Sana can picture Mina's eyebrows scrunching in confusion. “Is that what you think? I feel like you read her so well and she still seems like a mystery to me.”

* * *

It's been a while since Sana ﬁgured out that Mina might be physically attracted to Momo--she's just going to call it out for what it is. In fact it has been obvious to Sana for a while, but poor Mina herself is probably in denial about it, attributing the behavior Sana observes to some other reason.

While Sana ﬁnds it amusing to see Mina lick her lips unconsciously whenever Momo’s body ﬂows through the sanchin kata, or even when Momo is just bending over to clean strands of hair from the ﬂoor, it doesn't mean that Sana hasn't been serious about, well, all the girlfriend talk.

For all of her acknowledged faults, Sana really is serious about that, because it's Mina and the thought of not being able to have her is abhorrent, unthinkable. Mina seems to understand this, because unlike Sana, Mina spent all of her childhood in a family that taught her manners, decency, things like that. Although she's hardly an angel despite that luminous face (luckily for Sana, who is pretty abominable), Mina's not the cheating type, because that's simply not how she was raised. It's sweet and totally in-character for Mina to be concerned that Sana might not approve.

Perhaps Mina thinks Sana would be hurt and jealous if the attraction manifests itself. She's not wrong to be concerned--Sana is quite capable of jealousy, from harmless envy to vicious covetousness, so vicious she would kill--she can do it all. One might say that she's perfected the art. However, this is Momo, who Sana ﬁnds to be very attractive as well, and to be frank, Sana thinks that if they could share, it would be the ideal situation. (Actually, Sana _is_ envious--of Momo's delicious-looking abdominal muscles, but she is also of the mindset that if she can't get her own washboard abs, she wouldn't mind a taste of Momo's.)

It's sort of the same situation with Tzuyu, except Momo has this coarse ferocity underneath that clueless face that is just as compelling than Tzuyu's ethereal, frigid beauty. For Momo’s part, regardless of her stoicism and inability to express human emotion properly, it's clear that she has grown to crave Mina's presence and understanding. Not that this proves anything in regards to _Momo_ possibly being attracted to Mina, but Sana just has that feeling. She can relate, even if she's technically better at interpersonal relationships; both of them are monsters who wandered too close and were pulled in by Mina's gravity.

She thinks about this on the train back to Osaka, as she rests her head on Mina's shoulder and listens to Mina describe the walks she took after work, exploring Tokyo. Mina talks about the frenzy of bright lights and the continuous noise and rumble that is Shibuya, late night gyudon with Momo after post-work drinking sessions with her colleagues, seedy back alleys in Shinjuku that make her feel like she's been dropped into a video game universe, browsing through shops in Omotesando, and visiting the private gallery in Daikanyama that displays and sells pieces from up and coming artists, but also acts as a front for Tzuyu to arrange sales of stolen art. “Apparently there's a steady demand for Krystal Jung’s photography,” and at the mention of the younger Jung, Sana tunes back in to Mina's words. “Some of her work is displayed at the gallery and Tzuyu told me about some zaibatsu heir who swept in and bought half of the display because it was one of her color series. I'm told that her color photography is extremely rare.”

“What did you think of it?”

Mina rests her head on Sana's, her eyes ﬂicking across the aisle to a sleeping Momo, sprawled in her seat with limbs slung over the armrest and mouth hanging open, and yet Sana knows that the slightest change in air current will wake her up. “I saw some of her work as a student on Yale’s website; it wasn't bad but I think she's deﬁnitely improved.”

Sana laughs. Momo’s eyes blink open, and then close again when nothing immediately dangerous registers. “A little backhanded, coming from you.”

“I didn't study photography, so I can only give my honest opinion.” Mina straightens up, sweeps a stray lock of hair away from Sana's face and smiles knowingly at her. Sana holds her gaze, watches it soften to something gentler and warmer. She feels the inexorable pull of the stars, feels foolish and clumsy for a sudden moment, even as she easily smiles back.


End file.
